He takes my mouth with his, a hand grazing my throat like a warm, rough necklace.
"Touch me," he breathes onto my lips.
My hands slip under his shirt, over his abdomen, his muscles tight and warm against my fingertips. I touch the places on him I'...
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7:37 PM
I don't want to be here. I don't want him to be here, either.
Middlebridge Police Station sags under the weight of its own age. Inside, the lighting is dim and flickering, throwing shadows across the linoleum floor that has yellowed with time. The air smells of stale coffee and industrial cleaner that will never wipe away the grime of this place.
As I step inside, my pink dress, now stained with red, clings to my side uncomfortably. I walked here, Grey having been arrested with his car keys in hand. And all the way, my arm dripped. I'm half-sure there's still a piece of glass reopening a wound.
Fiona's foggy eyes narrow from behind her desk. "Ah, Officer Thorn warned me about you. You can't see the boy. Get out of my station."
I won't leave, not with Grey in one of these cells feeling more trapped and scared than I feel in this lobby.
"Get out!" Fiona says, pursing her wrinkly lips.
"I'm not leaving until I see him," I say quietly.
She picks up and throws a stapler at me. I bite back a wince as it hits my hip bone and clatters to the ground.
"Shoo!"
Greyson is locked up because he protected me. "No," I say.
After an eternity, Fiona huffs and pushes away from her desk, moving her wheelchair with her arms toward the hall. She beckons me with a jerk of her grey head. I follow her down the narrow hall that leads deeper into the eerily silent station.
I'm in a police station that feels more like a mausoleum trying to piece together how everything has gone so wrong so quickly.
We reach the end of the corridor, where a single, dim bulb illuminates the entrance to the cells. The air is cooler here, the scent of disinfectant stronger.
Fiona gestures with a nod of her head towards the last cell on the left before wheeling herself back towards the front desk without another word.
The cell is small, the iron bars unyielding. And there, on a bench that looks too hard to offer any comfort, sits Greyson. His posture is broken over, arms resting on his knees, head hung. Even from this distance, I can see the dark stains on the concrete beneath him, drops of blood falling from his mouth and nose.
Slowly, I slide down to the ground, my shoulder fitting between two bars. The cool metal presses against my skin.
Minutes pass—or maybe it's hours. Finally, Greyson's voice breaks the silence, so low and laden with sadness that it barely reaches me.
"You were supposed to wait. You were supposed to save yourself."
His words feel like a blow, not because they're cruel, but because of the despair behind them.
